Campus Safety will use a new electronic system called BOSSCARS Parking Management Software to replace the current handwritten ticket system in fall 2015.
Currently, all numbers and statistics are not stored electronically but in a file system on paper. Officers must write tickets by hand before returning to input the data manually so they can inform the accounting department, who also bills the students manually.
“It’s a more modern way of doing things. A lot of schools have this, it’s just that we didn’t have funding to be able to do that,” Ojeisekhoba said.
ELECTRONIC TICKETING
With BOSSCARS Parking Management Software, students will be notified electronically of any tickets they have received within two days. Students will also be able to make appeals and receive responses online as well.
“It makes it easier to bill. It also makes it easier to appeal tickets,” Ojeisekhoba said.
Pastoral care and counseling graduate student Rebecca Jenn has had one ticket and tried to appeal it, but was unable to. Jenn says the new system would be convenient for her to view previous ticket history.
“If we get a physical [ticket] then it’s like, oh okay if I lose it then I can still view it whether it’s through my.Biola or some other avenue,” Jenn said.
Other students who haven’t received any tickets are still pleased that they would be able to pay tickets online. It would save extra time and energy, said Tyler Graham, business management junior.
“That would be great,” Graham said. “It would save me an extra step of having me go to whatever department.”
NO TICKET QUOTAS
Parking, speeding and disorderly conduct tickets can range anywhere from $35 to $100, but parking in spots specifically marked as handicapped can reach up to $200 to $250. Tickets are not for generating funds, but to regulate parking on campus, Ojeisekhoba said. Funds received from tickets make up a small fraction of Campus Safety’s budget and the number of tickets Campus Safety has given out are down by almost fifty percent since last year.
“We can not rely on the number of tickets we write to fund the department. Because how in the world am I going to sit down and guess … you know, we don’t plan for all those,” Ojeisekhoba said.
Unpredictability is also the main reason why Campus Safety does not impose quotas on its officers. Campus Safety has never had quotas and Ojeisekhoba does not plan to start one any time soon.
“Quotas is the wrong way to do things, in my opinion because it can lead to other kinds of issues. It’s not right to say you’ve got have quotas, then it makes people desperate, employees desperate. We’re not going to do quotas as long as I’m chief here. It’s unfair to the students. In my opinion, I think that no police department should have quotas,” Ojeisekhoba said.
